Aimed at halting desertification and meeting climate goals, the project to create a 1,400-kilometre green wall faces major hurdles — land conflicts, poor coordination, and tight timelines — with just three monsoons left to deliver
The idea of planting tree barriers or green walls to stop the spread of deserts has met with little success worldwide. In 2007, the African Union responded to the extending desertification of the Sahara Desert and resolved to build the green wall by planting trees for an 8,000 km long stretch passing through eleven countries — namely Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan — to be completed by 2030.
The idea of a wall slowly morphed into a more acceptable mosaic of forested lands, interspersed with farmland and grassland spread over 780 million hectares. The afforestation target is brought down to 100 million hectares, and yet the project has faced challenges like insufficient funding and coordination among the members and funding agencies. Eighteen per cent of the physical target is said to have been achieved so far.
In CoP 16, under the auspices of the United Nations’ Convention to Combat Desertification, nearly 200 countries in December 2024 committed to prioritise land restoration and drought resilience, aiming to mitigate land degradation and ensure access to food, water, shelter, and economic opportunities for all.
In recent months, India also announced the plan to build a green wall approximately 1,400 km long across four states — Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat. The wall is also said to connect places from Mahatma Gandhi’s birthplace in Porbandar in Gujarat to Rajghat in Delhi, where he was finally laid to rest. The wall will have some natural forests, and some plantations, interspersed with restored agricultural land, pastureland and water bodies all along the 1,400 km long wall. The Aravalli Hills have sheltered India’s northern states from the Thar Desert and checked the marching of the desert over centuries. The hills have an impact on the climate of northwest India and beyond.
Mountain ranges generally guide monsoon clouds eastwards towards Shimla and Nainital, which helps in bringing monsoons to the Himalayan Region and recharge the catchments of the rivers. In winter months, the Aravalli Hills protect the alluvial valleys of the northern plains from westerlies originating from Central Asia. These hills have been plundered and gradually degraded.
Gradual deforestation, stone mining, and extension of urban areas on the outskirts of Delhi have resulted in intensifying pollution, dust storms and causing an unprecedented rise in temperature in the Delhi NCR region and northern plain of the country. Delhi in the last two years has experienced floods, record-breaking cold waves, and summer temperatures up to 50° Celsius. Pollution due to smog in the Delhi NCR region between October and February has become an annual feature, leading to a surge in breath-related illnesses and human health hazards.
Drawing inspiration from the African Union’s Great Green Wall, India has proposed to reforest 1.15 million hectares of area in the states of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat by 2027. While the length of the wall is 1,400 km, the average width is 5 km, largely covering foothills and buffer areas on either side of the Aravalli Hills.
ISRO’s desertification and land degradation atlas shows that India has 97.85 million hectares of degraded lands, and states like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Delhi have more than 50 per cent degraded lands as compared to their geographical areas. The project is estimated to cost `7,500 crores, and 78 per cent of it will be provided by the Centre and 20 per cent will be borne by the states.
The balance of 2 per cent would come from international funding.In response to the Paris Climate Accord of 2015, India has committed to afforest 26 million hectares of degraded lands by 2030 to create additional carbon sequestration potential of 2.5 to 3 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent, and the proposal of a green wall in four states is part of our larger environmental commitment to the UNCCC. India’s forests have stored 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent, and in a span of the last ten years, we have only added 540 million tonnes.
In other words, we need to add additional potential of at least 2 gigatons by 2030. This appears to be quite far-fetched and indicates that we are not on course to fulfil this commitment in response to the Paris Accord. The nitty-gritty of handing over degraded lands to Forest Departments for afforestation is quite complex. A large chunk of degraded lands is under the purview of revenue administration, and states generally make available these lands for development projects. The political bosses always apprehend handing it over to the Forest Department, as sufficient land will not be left behind for taking up any other development project in future.
The lands of the Aravalli Hills are under the control of the Revenue Department, which is not mandated to conserve vegetation. Trees have been cleared, and the lands have been used for farmhouses, banquet halls, and commercial activities, and further hills are flattened to build access roads. In other words, the Aravalli Hills have been severely fragmented. There are numerous private holdings along the 1,400 km length of the proposed wall. The mode of operations — whether the private lands are to be acquired for the project for growing trees or the landowners will be compensated and encouraged to take up planting on their lands — is unclear.
Ever since we fixed the afforestation target of 26 million hectares of degraded lands, we have not broken it down to states and districts, and even the Central Government has not taken up any monitoring of the progress. There is no public document indicating the progress made in any state either. If we have added 540 million tonnes of space in our tree and forest cover for carbon sequestration, we have done it through agroforestry. The fact is also corroborated by the Forest Survey of India’s latest 2023 report, which has highlighted the success of agroforestry.
The project was originally conceived with the initiative of the Haryana Forest Department and is proposed to cover degraded lands in Gurgaon, Faridabad, Bhiwani, Mahendragarh and Rewari districts of Haryana. In addition, the project also covers eleven districts of Rajasthan and three districts of Gujarat. Interstate coordination does not appear to be difficult, as all the states are ruled by Bharatiya Janata Party Governments. However, the coordination within the state — especially between the Revenue and Forest Departments, is going to be a challenge. If the planting of 1.15 million hectares is to be concluded by the 2027 rains, then we have only three monsoon seasons including the current one to complete the task.
If we are to succeed in completing the project on time, do each of the district-level forest officers in all four states know their annual targets, and are they prepared for the seedling stocks of native species in their nurseries? For planting during the 2025 monsoon, the area should be ready with pits/trenches or even tractor-ploughed, and at the same time, good quality seedlings should be available in the nursery.
Even for 2026 planting, the area should be demarcated by now, and seeds from genetically superior native species for growing healthy seedlings could have been procured.
Why should the calendar of nursery and planting operations be strictly adhered to? Because the planting should be carried out in the initial stages of the monsoon so that the plants receive sufficient backup showers to minimise mortality. In the warming world, the monsoon is not uniformly distributed in the season.
The plantations could be subjected to alternate flooding and drought, which can severely impact the success of the plantation. The implementing officers should take lessons from the performance of older plantations in the region and take appropriate measures to overcome the reasons for failures. The project has technical and administrative challenges, and I wish the states to implement it successfully.
(The writer is retired Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Head of Forest Force), Karnataka. Views are personal)
